WHAT TO WATCH FOR THIS WEEK: As the Highway Trust Fund barrels toward bankruptcy, the next transportation bill will be a hot topic this week. We’ll get to hear from the key players at the AASHTO conference — Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and Senate EPW Chair Barbara Boxer speak on Wednesday and House Transportation Chair Bill Shuster is up on Thursday. And the House T&I Committee gets involved with a Wednesday roundtable on reauthorization and a Thursday hearing on highway freight mobility. As Congress worries about the bill, President Barack Obama is taking a different road. On Wednesday he goes to St. Paul, Minn., to unveil “a new competition encouraging investments to create jobs and restore infrastructure” that’s part of the administration's sans-Congress push.

Story Continued Below

SCHUMER WANTS AUTO DATA STANDARDS: Sen. Chuck Schumer wants NHTSA and the Federal Trade Commission to set guidelines to protect drivers’ data as more and more cars are linked to personal information. In a Sunday release, the New York senator cited a 2013 GAO report that found that 90 percent of automakers shared data collected from drivers with a third party. “Cars are ‘smarter’ than they have ever been, and they will only continue to get smarter as technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace. Cars are now able to track where we shop, where we eat and where we go on family vacations, but drivers should be able to go about their daily lives without being tracked,” he said.

MUST-READ — The drone problem: Kevin has the story: “The Washington Nationals used a drone to photograph spring training. Real estate agents use them to show off sprawling properties. Martin Scorsese hired one to film a scene in ‘The Wolf of Wall Street.’ So where does this leave the FAA, which insists that commercial drone use is illegal? Way behind — and facing turbulence as drone use explodes. Thanks to falling prices, spotty enforcement and the fact that it’s almost impossible to spot the devices being used, the FAA is often powerless to halt the growing drone swarm. Retailers freely sell the tiny planes, quadcopters and hexacopters for as little as a few hundred dollars, and entrepreneurs continually come up with creative uses like wedding photography and crop monitoring — along with delivering beer and dropping off dry-cleaning.” Read the whole thing on POLITICO: http://politi.co/1feRdhA

GOOD MONDAY MORNING. Thanks for reading POLITICO’s Morning Transportation, your daily tipsheet on trains, planes, automobiles and ports, where on this day in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII issued a decree about what would come to be called the Gregorian Calendar, which made several small updates to the Julian calendar, like how often leap years occur. Please be in touch: asnider@politico.com and on Twitter at @ AdamKSnider.

DENHAM, CHSRA SPAR OVER FUNDING: Rep. Jeff Denham sent a scathing press release on Friday, saying the FRA is “protecting” the California High-Speed Rail Authority and thereby “putting California taxpayers at greater risk.” His anger came from the agency’s adoption of a new Funding Contribution Plan — essentially a detailed spreadsheet of current and projected expenditures and revenues. Denham said the document pushes back by three months the deadline for CHSRA to chip in $180 million toward the project, but the Authority says the April 1 deadline (now July 1) never really existed in the first place. It’s a bit of a semantic fight that gets into how the underlying grant agreement is a “living document” that reflects the new funding plans filed every quarter. The takeaway, however, remains the same: Denham and Republicans are still doing their best to derail the ambitious $67 billion project. Your host explains it for Pros: http://politico.pro/1ceeWP0

LET’S PLAY SOME SLOTS: The final DCA slot that the new American Airlines had to give up has been accounted for. It went to Southwest Airlines — which won’t even use it. A spokeswoman told Bloomberg that on top of the 27 daily round trip flights it agreed to buy, it won the rights to a Sunday round-trip flight, which “we did not pay for” and will not use ( http://bloom.bg/MnaIgU).

**A message from POWERJobs: Jobs on our radar this week: Senior Communications Associate at HDMK, HR Business Partner at METRO and Business Intelligence Developer at SAIC. Interested? Apply to these jobs and more at www.POWERJobs.com; finally, a career site made for YOU!**

IN TODAY’S FEDERAL REGISTER: DOT kicks off the comment period on banning cell phone calls during flights, a much-discussed topic that’s been the rare issue to bring together members of Congress from both parties (according to statements) and the American public (according to multiple polls). The comment period ends March 26. http://1.usa.gov/NpDAWN

GOVS FOR DEVOLUTION: Two GOP governors suggested eliminating the federal DOT and devolving transportation spending back to the states on Saturday. Dave Heineman of Nebraska and Jan Brewer of Arizona, at the NGA winter meeting, complained that the lack of long-term funding certainty was hampering their ability to plan road projects. The most recent highway bill, MAP 21, lasted only 27 months. “I think the states have been a lot more innovative than the federal government,” Heineman said during a meeting on the next bill. “I've often thought, why don't you just give us the federal gas tax and let us take care of it. We'll just take you out of the picture, get rid of the Department of Transportation, all the regulatory agencies and we'll take care of it at the state level.” “I vote aye,” Gov. Brewer interjected. But former DOT official Roy Kienitz laid down a bit of reality by saying it’s a long-shot.

THIS AIN’T OVER YET: The UAW is appealing the recent loss of a unionization vote at a VW plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., claiming “extraordinary interference” from Republican pols in the state like Sen. Bob Corker and Gov. Bill Haslam. “It’s an outrage that politically motivated third parties threatened the economic future of this facility and the opportunity for workers to create a successful operating model that would grow jobs in Tennessee,” UAW President Bob King said in a statement. Read the text of the appeal ( http://bit.ly/1fuGNyT) or get the whole story from Kevin on POLITICO: http://politi.co/1fGk9Qc

Notable: Haslam made a mention of the fed’s role in infrastructure at a POLITICO event: “Government has a really proper role. Anytime we tear down the idea that government is necessary is wrong,” he said. “Government is about buying those goods and services that people can’t buy themselves. We can’t buy our own roads. We can’t build our own schools.” POLITICO: http://politi.co/1k0Oopg

DOT, FREIGHT RAIL AGREE TO TANK CAR CHANGES: The freight rail industry and DOT have reached a deal on changes to improve the safety of rail cars transporting crude oil. According to a letter from Secretary Foxx to AAR ( http://politico.pro/1hmKo0z), railroads have agreed to increase inspections of tracks and other items beyond what’s required by current regulations, analyze the routes trains use based on more stringent safety factors typically used for hazardous materials, slow down trains carrying more than 20 crude cars through DHS-designated high threat areas and install new braking systems to help reduce what’s called the “pile up effect” during derailments. Friday’s announcement was one of the first results of a “call to action” meeting between Foxx and stakeholders, with more coming — maybe even this week. Kathryn has more for Pros: http://politico.pro/1feTXeX

HOT HOT HOT: The battery in the Japan Airlines Dreamliner that was smoking last year reached 1220 degrees Fahrenheit, Japanese investigators said in a report issued Friday. AFP: http://bit.ly/1dkU1tG

THE AUTOBAHN (SPEED READ)

- Amtrak has a new plan to give free rides to writers — here’s how it came to be. The Wire: http://bit.ly/1enLVjM

- Dulles Airport has been formally invited to apply for a TIFIA loan for the Silver Line Metro project. MWAA: http://bit.ly/1fuUsGb

- France, U.S. discussing reparations for Nazi victims transported in French trains — and the issue is tied to bidding on Maryland’s Purple Line. Washington Post: http://wapo.st/1k0SygF

- Metrolink starts new PTC system, making it the first commuter railroad with the I-ETMS technology. Progressive Railroading: http://bit.ly/1bB3PEF

- The N.C. State Ports Authority should have its new leader by March or April. StarNews: http://bit.ly/1fLGcVJ

THE COUNTDOWN: MAP-21 expires and DOT funding runs out in 219 days. FAA policy is up in 584 days. The mid-term elections are in 253 days and the 2016 presidential election is in 988 days. MLB’s Opening Day is in 35 days.

CABOOSE — National Airport of yore: Long before Ronald Reagan was having just about everything named after him, it was just plain old National Airport just outside of the District in Virginia. Shorpy delivers this amazing picture from 1940 of the “interior of waiting room showing ticket counter”: http://bit.ly/1mBLnAH

**A message from POWERJobs: Tap into the power of POWERJobs for the newest job opportunities in the Washington area from the area’s top employers, including U.S. Chamber of Commerce, METRO and Deloitte. Powered by names you trust — POLITICO, WTOP, WJLA/ABC-TV, NewsChannel 8 and Federal News Radio- POWERJOBS is the ultimate career site with more than 2 million job searches and nearly 17,000 applications submitted this year so far. Connect through Facebook or LinkedIn, search jobs by industry and set up job-specific email alerts using www.POWERJobs.com, the site for Washington’s top talent.**

** A message from the U.S. Travel Association: To make America competitive again, we need to be connected, to each other and the world. America has zero airports ranked in the top 25 globally, and that's more than just an embarrassment—it's a missed opportunity. Travel is critical to our country's trade balance, since it accounts for ten percent of all exports, and supports one in nine American jobs. If we're not connected through modern airports, America loses out. Investment in our country's infrastructure is an investment in connectivity, which is vital for our people, our economy, and our place on the global stage. Learn more: http://bit.ly/1QLPK5L **

Authors:

About The Author

Adam Snider is a transportation reporter for POLITICO Pro and author of Morning Transportation. He has covered transportation since 2007, joining POLITICO in 2011 to launch MT and later found the word “Mica-ism.”

Snider is a fan of all modes of transportation, though nothing beats a good silly walk. In his spare time, he can be found brewing a hoppy beer, rooting for the Nationals, watching a bad 1970s horror movie or exploring the District from his home base in Mount Pleasant.

Adam studied English and communications at Clemson University in South Carolina. His work has been featured by Nieman Journalism Lab and his snark has appeared on MSNBC. He has had several works of fiction published in literary journals and is constantly reminded of his proclamation to a fiction professor many years ago that journalism is for sellouts who abandon their creative dreams.